1. Field Of The Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus and methods for teaching by brief, flashed, visual presentation of information, primarily textual information. The present invention more particularly relates to (i) a computer-based tachistoscope for ordered presentation of information, including information briefly exposed to view, particularly for the purposes of teaching reading and spelling, and (ii) automated, tachistoscopic, methods for the presentation of information.
2. Background Of The Invention
The previous theory and practice of machine-based instruction, the previous teaching technique of flash cards, and prior knowledge of reading dynamics are all pertinent to the present invention.
2.1 General Characteristics of Previous Machine-Based Instruction
It is known that machines, including computer systems, can aid in delivering educational instruction to students The course of instruction, or teaching regimens, performed by machines generally exhibit certain common characteristics. The instruction is stepwise. A student-user often needs to demonstrate mastery of one piece of information before being allowed to proceed to assimilate further information. The course of instruction may be in a fixed path, with all students being presented the identical information in the identical order, but is not invariably so.
The more sophisticated machine instructional systems employ programmed learning wherein a student-user's evident mastery, or failings, in one area of information respectively result either in an immediate advancement to further related information, or else in a remedial teaching of the information which the student-user has failed to grasp. The sophistication, extent, nature, and quality of the curriculum material taught by machine instructional systems varies widely. However, teaching machines are currently most widely used for the teaching of low level information such as that occurring at the elementary school level.
The production of machine-based instructional programs, or curricula, has generally proven to be an art. Certain programs of machine instruction are vastly more successful than other programs in inducing student-user to learn the identical material. Machine instructional programs may be successful or unsuccessful in varying degrees in accordance with the pace at which materials are presented, the positive reinforcement that is provided to the student-user, and the order in which the materials are presented. A carefully constructed teaching program is necessary in order to engender student-user interest and cooperation, and in order to promote maximum learning.
Nonetheless to careful and painstaking design, machine-based instruction is generally thought to be inferior to human instruction. Part of this inferiority is attributed to lack of the spontaneity that is normally inherent in the dialogue between a human teacher and his or her student. At least part of the superior spontaneity of human dialogue is, no doubt, based on the subtle, non-verbal, interactions that transpire between a qualified teacher and his or her student. The teacher is sensitive to non-verbal or non-written clues regarding the progress of the student, and this sensitivity allows for the better tailoring and adaptation of the curriculum. Particularly, the curriculum may be presented in a unique, or spontaneous, manner for each individual student.
Part of the seeming lack of spontaneity in machine-based instruction may be, however, simply temporal. The machine often behaves somewhat "woodenly" in its presentation of material, and becomes a passive chalkboard-like device in which a rigid series of requests and responses are mandated in order to permit instruction to progress. Machine-based instruction in accordance with the present invention will be seen to require, in some instances, proper student-user responses in order that a sequence of instruction may progress. However, and substantially unlike most previous machine-based instruction, in other instances the apparatus and method in accordance with the present invention will be found to present certain information only momentarily. After the presentation of this information, the instruction will continue--substantially without any mandated interactive student-user response.
The brief and transient, tachistoscopic, visual presentation of certain information in accordance with the present invention (as hereinafter explained) will proceed, at least upon occasion, without waiting for a student-user response. This operation tends to "perk up" the course of information presentation. It challenges the student-user to pay attention to what is going on, and to assimilate the information. This is especially true when, as will be seen to be the case with the present invention, after the once-presented transitory information is removed from the student-user's view the student-user must thereafter answer questions regarding such information. The information must have been assimilated, and must be recalled, in order to allow progress of instruction.
As still another tachistoscopic instructional technique in accordance with the present invention, the successive tachistoscopic presentations of information will be seen to be spontaneously and automatically varied, normally by being speeded up, at intervals. The intervals are typically irregular, and the speed up in presentation is typically for several successive presentations and associated quantums of presented information.
Finally, the display latency time duration of the tachistoscopic presentations will be seen to be variable, and to be variably sensitive to characteristics of the information presented.
Although it is known to adjust the rate of tachistoscopic presentations, with the display latency time of each such presentation being the inverse of the rate, it is not known to automatically, and independently, adjust either or both the tachistoscopic display rate and/or the display latency time durations of the individual presentations.
Resultant to all these variations, machine-based-instruction in accordance with the present invention will be seen to be "lively" and "dynamic", and not "wooden" The tachistoscopic presentations will be seen to vary, in certain temporal and visual characteristics and generally automatically, so as to appear responsive to the requirements of the student-user, and not merely capricious or inconstant. The dynamic temporal responsiveness of tachistoscopic apparatus and methods in accordance with the present invention will be found to be firmly based on learning dynamics, and, by such firm foundation, to be extremely friendly and compliant to a student-user. They elicit learning in a manner that may be favorably compared with customized human instruction.
2.2 Previous Flash Card Manual Instructional Techniques
Teaching is an old art, preceding not only machine-based instruction but civilization itself. Therefore a great deal is understood about the efficacy of prior art human-based educational techniques. One such time-honored prior art instructional technique is the use of flash cards. The information upon a flash card is momentarily presented to a student-user, either by his own actions or (as is more common) by the actions of another. The flash card is then repositioned so that the student-user may not read the information thereon, and the student-user is asked a question concerning such information. Such question may be as simple as the repetition of the information upon the flash card (such as to spell the previously exposed word, for example "democracy") or may only be related to the previously exposed information (such as to explain the meaning of "democracy"). In other words, flash cards operate at different levels. The student-user may be asked to respond substantially contemporaneously with the visually exposed information; i.e., to read the word "democracy" The student-user may be forced to a response which, by its innate length, will extend into the period wherein the information is no longer visible; i.e., to spell the word "democracy" after its transitory presentation. Finally, flash cards may be mere "ticklers" for more extensive memory stores. In this case it may not much matter how long the information is exposed to view; i.e., to explain the meaning of "democracy" The utility of the flashed presentation of information is that its assimilation, and retention, is mandated in order that questions concerning such information may be correctly answered by the student-user after the information is removed from view. Flash cards are a proven means of forcing information assimilation, and constitute a rigorous form of instruction which is generally thought to be demanding, and difficult, by student-users.
2.3 Reading Dynamics
The dynamics of reading are also well understood. The manner of the learning, and teaching, of this essential modern skill has been widely studied in all areas: from improving the reading speed comprehension and fact retention of college level readers to the earliest instruction of beginning and/or functionally impaired readers. Certain characteristics of good reading skills are applicable to a broad spectrum of readers, and to a broad range of reading speeds. One such characteristic is that a good reader does not regress in the text read. Rather, the reading progress is always forward. The good reader of any speed level exhibits no reversion of eye movement, or attention, to words, phrases, and/or sentences previously read.
Another characteristic is that a good reader does not read words individually but, upon gaining increasing visual conversance with word images, comes to read words as groups, several at a time. Indeed, the very fastest readers assimilate entire phrases of many words at each movement of the eyes, "grabbing" off large chunks of text material successively throughout the passage read. In the extreme, certain speed readers allege that they do not appreciably read side-to-side, but rather read vertically down a page assimilating entire lines of text at one time. Regardless of how numerous the words, or long the phrases, that are assimilated at one time during reading, even the youngest readers need to be early taught to desist from the reading of individual words, and to instead progress in reading text by mentally processing several words upon each successive fixation of the eyes.
The preferred reading process wherein more than one, and preferably a large number, of words are simultaneously assimilated upon each successive fixation by the text-scanning eye may be equally as well described in terms of the required behavior of the human eye as it may be described in terms of the required thought of the human brain. Mainly, the reader's eye must be taught to "leap" from one fixation point to the next across a line, and down a page, of text. The eye should rest only fleetingly at each fixation point. The text material assimilated around such point should be as broad, including as many words, as is possible. This breadth of reading vision may be called peripheral vision, or the acuity of peripheral vision. Good readers see, and assimilate, broad swaths of the text which they are reading.
Even the youngest readers are beneficially early taught to forego word-by-word progression in reading, and to attempt to read more quickly by assimilating words in groups, and by phrases. It is currently believed that readers who assimilate in broad swaths also enjoy better reading comprehension. That this comprehension variation is not merely an innate difference between individual readers may be demonstrated by the fact that even successful, high speed, readers have difficulty assimilating textual information when they are allowed to read it only but a single word at a time, no matter how slowly and leisurely the information is presented. A good reader who is forced to revert to word-by-word reading not only finds it frustrating, but actually counterproductive to his/her reading comprehension.
It is therefore desirable that a mechanical device for teaching reading should be able both to (i) preclude visual regression within the read text, and (ii) force the eye and mind to assimilate more than one word during each successive fixation of the eye that occurs during the reading of a body of text. The present invention will so function to both prevent that priorly read text should be reread, and, even more importantly, cause that the student-user's reading of the text must effectively proceed by assimilations of multiple words, and cannot effectively proceed single word by single word.